by Tom Gurney
Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
Published on June 19, 2020 / Updated on October 14, 2023
Email: tomgurney1@gmail.com / Phone: +44 7429 011000
Composition V by Wassily Kandinsky: Introduction
Wassily Kandinsky's Composition V is a vast 1911 oil painting in which a heavy, looping black line sweeps through loosely joined patches of grey, blue, red, yellow and green. It can appear nonrepresentational at first. Kandinsky, however, named the Resurrection as his chosen theme when he discussed the work in a 1914 lecture. In the painting, the imagery is veiled rather than removed. Studies and related pictures have helped scholars identify trumpeting angels, a city, a boat and figures rising below. The viewer need not find every motif to feel the force of the large canvas, but those sources explain why its apparent abstraction carries an apocalyptic subject. MoMA's 1995 exhibition catalogue records Composition V as oil on canvas, 190 × 275 cm, then in a private collection. MoMA, Kandinsky: Compositions catalogue, PDF pp. 39–41, 84.
The painting also stands at a point of public rupture. The jury of Munich's Neue Künstlervereinigung questioned its inclusion in a 1911 exhibition. Kandinsky and colleagues resigned; their first Blue Rider exhibition soon displayed the painting. The formal size rule was cited in a later published account, while the suggestion that its unfamiliar visual language was the deeper cause is an interpretation. The episode matters, but it should not flatten a complex break among artists into a single heroic rejection story. Composition V remains an ambitious painting in its own right: a Resurrection subject transformed into movement, density and changing colour. MoMA catalogue, PDF p. 62; [5].
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Watch on YouTubeAt a Glance
- Artist:Wassily Kandinsky.
- Title:Composition V (Komposition V); a documented subtitle is The Last Judgment (Jüngstes Gericht).
- Completion:17 November 1911 according to Kandinsky's handlists as reported by MoMA.
- Medium and size:oil on canvas, 190 × 275 cm.
- Collection:privately held in the museum and exhibition records cited here; present ownership is not independently verified.
- Subject:Kandinsky identified the Resurrection as his starting theme in a 1914 lecture.
- Preparatory evidence:one surviving oil sketch and two small diagrams, distinct from the final canvas.
Where this work sits in Kandinsky’s career
The Blue Rider
1903Composition VII
1913Composition VIII
1923Several Circles
1926Sky Blue
1940Contents
- First look: an image held by a dark curve
- Why Resurrection belongs to the account
- What the catalogue identifies
- The black sweep and scattered marks
- Cool colour and dramatic feeling
- The oil sketch and two diagrams
- The 1911 exhibition dispute
- The numbered series around it
- Last Judgment and other readings
- From Kandinsky to private collections
- A route for close looking
- Why Composition V matters
- Frequently asked questions
- References
First look: an image held by a dark curve
The largest immediately legible gesture is a dark line that enters from the upper left, loops down across the centre and turns back through the picture. It is too strong to serve as a small contour around one isolated object. It binds areas of colour that otherwise seem to drift apart. The line's width and direction change. It can feel both drawn and structural, as though it traces an event across the whole canvas rather than a single figure.
There is little conventional depth. Pale grey and cream passages lie beside deeper greens, blues and reds, but they do not settle into a clear near-ground, middle distance and sky. Some light shapes appear to emerge from darker ones; other patches seem suspended. The lower part is relatively broad and open compared with the busier upper register. The eye can travel along the large dark curve, then double back to the smaller dark marks and bright accents scattered around it.
The painting's width matters. At 275 cm, it cannot be read like a small paper design held in the hand. A viewer at a distance may first register the looping black structure and the overall muted colour. Moving closer can reveal clusters of marks that suggest a trumpet, a figure or architecture. A reproduction compresses these stages of attention into a small rectangle. The existing local image, at modest resolution, supports description of the broad structure, but it cannot justify precise claims about the paint surface or every faint mark.
Why Resurrection belongs to the account
Kandinsky's 1914 Cologne lecture named the Resurrection as the theme he chose for Composition V. That is unusually direct evidence about the painting's subject. He also named the Deluge as the starting point for Composition VI. These are not retrospective titles invented by a modern viewer. Yet his account presents them as starting points for painting, not a demand that each resulting canvas function as a fully illustrated biblical episode. MoMA catalogue, PDF p. 39.
The MoMA catalogue sets the work beside Kandinsky's related depictions of the Resurrection and Last Judgment from 1910–11: oils, reverse-glass paintings, watercolours and a woodcut. In those smaller or more literal works, angels and other figures can be easier to identify. Their recurrence lets a scholar compare a particular curve or cluster in Composition V with a motif more clearly stated elsewhere. That comparative method is more persuasive than guessing at shapes from the final painting alone. It also requires care: a related picture is a separate object, not a photograph of an earlier state of this canvas.
A Resurrection subject can imply upheaval and renewal. The painting's dark sweep, dispersed forms and unstable sense of space can contribute to that mood without acting as a diagram of doctrine. The subject gives the viewer an intellectual route through the work; the visual arrangement still has to operate as painting. Kandinsky's own account of an old theme used for a new kind of picture helps explain why the result is difficult to decode. He chose a familiar subject and then altered the way it could be seen.
What the catalogue identifies
MoMA's catalogue uses the preparatory evidence and related works to identify several angels sounding trumpets. It describes an angel at upper left and another at upper right, other trumpet forms across the centre, a walled city near the top and human figures below. It also reads a boat at lower left and rising figures in the lower field. These are attributed scholarly identifications. In the small reproduction, the sweeping dark line and varied colour fields are clearer than each named character. MoMA catalogue, PDF pp. 39–40.
That difference between what a catalogue can reconstruct and what a casual glance reveals is central to this painting. The catalogue has room to compare multiple objects and a study; a viewer looking only at the final canvas meets compressed signs. A trumpet may be only an elongated pale or coloured shape edged by black. An angel's wing may blend into nearby marks. The motifs are not hidden as a puzzle with one perfect solution. Kandinsky made recognition uncertain while retaining traces of an established theme.
The city above can be particularly easy to miss when the whole painting is shrunk. It belongs to a high register amid other signs, not to a traditional skyline that anchors all the space. The lower figures do not form a sharply painted procession. These choices keep the eye moving between local discoveries and the large curve that dominates the field. It is possible to learn the iconography and still find that line, colour and overall rhythm have the strongest first impact.
The black sweep and scattered marks
The dark curve crosses colour zones without becoming a neutral outline around them. It may seem to carry the sound of a trumpet across the canvas, as the catalogue proposes, but it also acts as a compositional route. Follow it from one side to the other and notice how it interrupts pale areas. Look where it thickens, where it bends and where smaller lines cut across its path. These changes create different speeds of looking.
Shorter marks are dispersed around the broad gesture. Some look linear and sharp; others are partly lost in the paint. They keep the curve from turning into the only event. Around it, small flashes of red or blue can draw the eye out of the dark path and back into the field. One cannot reduce these relations to a single metaphor of sound or motion, but it is possible to describe their effects: the line binds, the accents interrupt, and the pale ground prevents every form from becoming equally heavy.
The upper register is comparatively dense, with dark strokes, coloured flashes and possible architectural fragments. The lower part offers a wider area of muted colour. That difference can suggest an event overhead and its consequences below, especially once the Resurrection theme is known. It is also a formal arrangement that works before the subject is explained. This double reading is a strength of the painting, not a contradiction to resolve.
Cool colour and dramatic feeling
The palette is not uniformly bright. Greyish, pale and cool passages occupy much of the picture, while stronger reds, blues and yellows appear in irregular pockets. Kandinsky's 1914 account, as discussed by MoMA, links a cooler handling of colour with his sense of high tragedy. The catalogue relates that statement to Composition V and to the painting's sometimes thin, luminous application. It is an artist's explanation of his aims and a curator's interpretation of the surface, not permission to assign one fixed emotion to each patch. MoMA catalogue, PDF p. 40.
The muted zones also make the dark sweep more forceful. A black line across a saturated, even field would work differently. Here it crosses areas that can look misted or unsettled. The brightest points are distributed unevenly, so the eye does not settle around one coloured centre. A viewer might feel that the painting's drama comes from contrasts in clarity as much as from the biblical subject: a bold curve against uncertain forms, vivid notes against washed colour, recognisable suggestions against an unsettled whole.
The catalogue notes that the image lacks much of the volume and atmospheric depth associated with traditional perspective. This helps the forms resist a single location in space. The work may suggest a city, figures and a boat, but it does not arrange them like actors on a stage with a fixed background. Its spiritual theme is approached through a visual field that can expand or compress as attention moves. The painting's scale lets those changes be felt across the canvas.
The oil sketch and two diagrams
Only three preparatory works are identified by MoMA as surviving for the final canvas: one oil sketch and two small diagrams made on the reverse of a letter. The oil Sketch for Composition V is 94.5 × 139 cm and belongs to the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg. It is large for a study but still roughly half the final canvas's height and width. The ink diagrams, 22.1 × 28 cm, are in the Centre Pompidou collection through Nina Kandinsky's bequest. Their different media invite different questions. MoMA catalogue, PDF pp. 39, 83.
The oil sketch can show how broad masses and painted relations were organised before the final scale. The diagrams compress movement into a few lines and colour notations. MoMA describes one as indicating the general movement of masses and the other as dividing the compositional scheme into parts. These sheets are evidence of planning. They challenge the notion that an expressive, rapidly moving surface must have been improvised without preparation.
A diagram is not an instruction to look only for named figures. Its marks may show a direction of movement or a balance of masses, while the finished oil changes how those relations feel. Likewise, the Hermitage sketch is not the same work with a different owner; it has its own size and object history. Placing the three studies beside the final canvas can help a reader ask what Kandinsky kept, intensified or allowed to blur. The final image should remain the centre of that comparison.
The 1911 exhibition dispute
Composition V became controversial before it entered the Blue Rider exhibition. MoMA's catalogue says the Neue Künstlervereinigung München jury questioned its inclusion in the group's forthcoming show. Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Franz Marc and Alfred Kubin resigned, and the first Blue Rider exhibition at Galerie Thannhauser displayed the canvas. A later account in the Lauder collection publication says its size exceeded an accepted limit. That may have been the formal ground for refusal; the claim that abstraction was the true or sole reason remains an interpretation. MoMA catalogue, PDF p. 62; [5].
The scale was indeed conspicuous: 190 × 275 cm. Rules about size can affect the practical organisation of an exhibition. The painting's veiled subject and unfamiliar handling also gave critics something substantial to debate. A careful history can state the documented jury dispute, the resignations and the subsequent exhibition without pretending to read every juror's private motive. It can also avoid making one object solely responsible for an entire collaborative movement.
The first Blue Rider exhibition gave the painting a new setting among works that challenged conventional subject and style. That context can help explain its early reception, but the canvas was already complete. Its title, Resurrection programme and black-and-colour structure do not derive their meaning solely from the controversy. An exhibition story can attract attention; sustained looking is needed to understand why this particular painting continued to matter.
The numbered series around it
Kandinsky gave only ten works the numbered Composition titles, according to MoMA's exhibition account. The first three were lost during the Second World War; seven survive. Composition V therefore sits among a limited group of major works, with Composition IV also completed in 1911 and Composition VI following in 1913. The same word in their titles signals ambition and method, not identical imagery or a fixed visual recipe. [2].
The previous Composition IV has more readily traceable riders, lance-like verticals and a relatively clear division between busy line and wider colour areas. Composition V binds much of the surface with its large dark curve and disperses the Resurrection signs across a more unstable space. That comparison concerns what the pictures show and how they guide the eye. It should not be reduced to the claim that V simply contains less representation than IV.
Kandinsky explicitly named the Deluge as the theme for Composition VI. The two themes can be discussed as related images of catastrophe and renewal, but their paintings should not be treated as interchangeable biblical illustrations. The sixth work has a different date, scale, setting and pictorial organisation. Looking at the three surviving canvases in sequence is useful only if the individual decisions in each remain visible.
Last Judgment and other readings
The subtitle The Last Judgment is documented in Münter's handlist as reported by MoMA. The Resurrection theme comes from Kandinsky's own later lecture. These names are related but not identical. One can describe them as a cluster of apocalyptic subjects without claiming that a single conventional story line is painted scene by scene. The possible angels, city, boat and rising figures supply clues, while much of their appearance is transformed.
MoMA's catalogue also discusses proposed links to Finno-Ugric and shamanic imagery. Some motifs could, in that scholarly reading, carry more than one religious or cultural association. This is an interpretive proposal, not a secure object label. It should be introduced, if at all, with the scholar's name and the comparison on which it rests. For a first encounter with the painting, the documented Resurrection theme and the surviving studies provide a firmer base than a detailed symbolic key built from uncertain correspondences. MoMA catalogue, PDF p. 41.
The coexistence of several possible readings is not evidence that the painting means anything a viewer wishes. Its making, titles, studies and early reception set limits. At the same time, Kandinsky did not render the scene so plainly that one interpretation exhausts it. A reader can hold together a historically grounded subject, specific visual observations and an admission that some marks remain ambiguous. That combination is more informative than either a rigid diagram or the claim that there is nothing to recognise.
From Kandinsky to private collections
The work's later ownership is partly documented through exhibition and collection publications. A published preview of The Ronald S. Lauder Collection says Josef Müller bought the canvas directly from Kandinsky in 1913. It describes the painting in a Swiss private collection when lent to MoMA's 1995 exhibition, then says Ronald Lauder acquired it about four years later. MoMA's catalogue and a 2013 Neue Galerie exhibition page identify the painting as privately held. Those records support a provenance outline while falling short of a verified present-owner statement for 2026. [5]; [1]; [4].
An online MoMA audio page contains a conflicting detail: its image alternative text names the Lenbachhaus, but its main object text says private collection. The catalogue, the exhibition page and the Lauder history align on private ownership. The museum in Munich holds separate Kandinsky works connected with the period, including a related Sound of Trumpets image. That is not a basis for transferring the final Composition V canvas to its collection. A current display location should not be inferred from an old exhibition loan or a mislabelled image field. [3].
This is a useful case in reading museum records critically. A caption attached to an image can be copied from a related object, while a catalogue entry may describe the painting more fully and with a publication date. When fields disagree, the difference should be recorded rather than silently reconciled. Here the main oil's dimensions, medium and private-collection listing are consistent across the substantial catalogue and later exhibition information. The misleading alternative text is isolated. The page can therefore state what those dated records support and leave a current owner or permanent display location open.
The existing page image is a modest reproduction, adequate for the broad formal description here. A larger file found online carries a public-domain mark but comes through a third-party reproduction chain with a jurisdictional reuse caveat. Because better resolution is optional and the reuse path is not completely clear for this site, this page keeps its existing image. The manuscript does not make technical claims that would require a sharper photograph.
A route for close looking
First ignore the subject labels and follow the dark curve. Where does it seem to begin and end? Does it enclose colour or cut across it? Notice whether your eye moves with it or stops at the smaller black marks. This pass establishes the visual structure without asking every stroke to represent a thing.
Then look for changes in density. The upper portion gathers coloured and dark signs; the lower portion appears broader and more muted. Compare the areas where pale paint lets a form breathe with the areas where a dark knot makes it hard to separate one shape from the next. The painting can feel dramatic because clarity comes and goes. This effect is available even in the small local image, though a direct view would reveal more about paint thickness and hue.
Only after that return to the Resurrection evidence. Try locating the trumpets and other motifs identified by MoMA, but keep a distinction between what you can actually see and what a study or curator helps you recognise. If a supposed figure stays elusive, the formal experience is not a failed decoding exercise. Kandinsky made a picture that can carry an old theme through an unusually open, unstable visual language.
Why Composition V matters
Composition V is a substantial moment in Kandinsky's prewar work because its visual force and historical record can both be followed closely. It is a monumental 1911 canvas, completed on a date recorded in his handlists. The Resurrection was his stated theme, and the surviving studies show deliberate construction. Its rejection from one exhibition and display in the first Blue Rider exhibition put its size and experimental language into immediate public debate. Later private ownership and occasional exhibition have made the object less continuously accessible than a museum-held painting, increasing the value of careful source attribution. [1]; [4].
The work matters equally as a painting. A powerful dark loop gathers an otherwise dispersed field; muted colour and flashes of brightness allow drama without an obvious stage; traces of angels and figures survive inside a composition that can first look abstract. That combination helps explain why Kandinsky could use a familiar apocalyptic subject to test new pictorial means. Knowing the subject deepens looking. It need not close it down.
Kandinsky artworks directory
Frequently Asked Questions
MoMA's catalogue reports that Kandinsky's handlists record 17 November 1911. The main canvas is therefore dated 1911, even though related exhibition events followed in December. MoMA catalogue, PDF p. 62.
MoMA and Neue Galerie sources identify it as a private-collection painting. A Lauder collection publication describes a later acquisition by Ronald Lauder after the 1995 MoMA exhibition, but this page has not independently verified present ownership or display in 2026. [1]; [4]; [5].
MoMA lists the final oil-on-canvas work at 190 × 275 cm. The Hermitage oil sketch and Pompidou diagrams have different dimensions and are separate objects. MoMA catalogue, PDF pp. 83–84.
Kandinsky said in a 1914 lecture that he chose the Resurrection as its theme. Münter's handlist gave it the subtitle The Last Judgment. The figures and signs are heavily transformed in the final painting. MoMA catalogue, PDF pp. 39, 62.
The Neue Künstlervereinigung jury questioned the work's inclusion. A later published account identifies its large size as the formal problem and suggests its abstraction may have added to the dispute. The exact motives of each juror are not established. Kandinsky and colleagues resigned, then showed the painting in the first Blue Rider exhibition. MoMA catalogue, PDF p. 62; [5].
MoMA identifies one surviving oil sketch in the Hermitage and two small diagrams on the back of a letter in the Centre Pompidou. They help trace Kandinsky's planning but should not be confused with the final private-collection canvas. MoMA catalogue, PDF pp. 39, 83–84.
Discussion
What do you notice first in Composition V? Share a close observation or a question about the evidence for this work.
Comments are for comparing what we see and what the cited sources establish.
Reader Insights
Where does the large dark curve most strongly redirect your eye?
How do the oil sketch and two diagrams change your reading of the Resurrection theme?
Which proposed figure is hardest to locate in the finished canvas?
Join the Conversation
Add your observation below and tell us which part of the artwork led you to it.
References
- Museum of Modern Art, Kandinsky: Compositions catalogue, 1995. View source.
- Museum of Modern Art, Kandinsky: Compositions exhibition account. View source.
- Museum of Modern Art, Composition V audio object page. View source.
- Neue Galerie, Vasily Kandinsky: From Blaue Reiter to the Bauhaus exhibition page. View source.
- The Ronald S. Lauder Collection, published preview. View source.
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